The Bifurcation of the Tabletop Adventure Game Scene

The Cargo Cult of Conventional Play in Tabletop Adventure Games is in a bind.

The Crushing Force Hammering From Above

Sorcerors By The Sea continue to demonstrate that their intention is to take Current Edition, and the supreme Network Effect that powers it, out of the tabletop medium entirely in favor of an all-digital, online-only business and user model centered around a propreitary virtual tabletop.

That VTT will use Fortnite-style brand crossover deals to add value on top of being supported by the owner of Current Edition to its use over competitors, and it will be tied to a virtual storefront where Gatcha-style monetization will be in place to turn Free To Play suckers into simps and whales- and now proven and ridiculously profitable model. Do the sort of balance passing that A Certain Winter Store is infamous for with Globe of Gankcraft to compel paying for content unlocks on a seasonal basis, be it via some form of Battle Pass or something more simple than that, and you can see why the C-Suite at SOBS and Stupid American Toy Company see this as a money printer in all but name.

Given how well it's worked in videogames, and to a lesser extend in SOBS' own original properties (as it created "Collectable Card Game" as a product category), they have every reason to believe it. Given how well everything we've seen to date caters to the Revealed Preferences of the targetted Normie audience, they are right to believe so- hobbyists are not the target audience anymore.

But the Cargo Cult cannot grok this. Their reactions, as both end users and as third party/competing product publishers shows this with every word out of their mouths.

They honestly think this will fail. They think it will fail because they think they are still the target audience, when every indication of the company's performance with regard to The Brand overtaking The Product as the primary source of value--maybe the only source of value--driving their decision-making.

Anything Brand-driven always becomes Normie-driven because Normies use Brands as shorthand for value and Brand-driven businesses always rely on Normiebux to drive their growth, establish their power, and maintain their dominance. This has been known since the days that Montgomary Ward shleps mail-order catalogs in magazines and newspapers over 150 years ago. (Formally acknowledged by Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann in the 1920s, after proving in in World War I as Allied Propagandists.)

Why do you think SOBS went so hard on Normie-facing media productions that made their Brand look good in Normie eyes? Why do you think they don't give two shits about the tabletop medium or the hobbyist audience? They know what Normies want, so they are making the product conform to Normie expectations to farm Normiebux using a Normie-friendly Brand pivot.

Which means that everything the Cargo Cult thinks is normal will be depreciated, denigrated, and destroyed to make way for Normiebux and Normie acceptance.

This is nothing less than SOBS' turning The Only Game That Matters into a giant corpo-run, corpo-operated Clubhouse aimed at gatekeeping the hobbyists out in favor of Normies. This is not due to some Death Cult ritual dogma. This is not due to some calls from this or that politician or NGO. This is not at all about Molech-facing bullshit. This is nothing more MBA Bro, Line Go Up, Stockholder Value Uber Alles, Mammon worship.

It's only going to get worse, and I can already see folks mainlining Copium like it was Black Tar Heroin.

The Cthonic Force Rumbling From Below

That Cargo Cult also faces the consequences of its past actions Memory Holing how the medium actually works coming back to bite them in the ass.

Turns out that you can't destroy the past forever. You can only hold it down, which is a lot like blowing up a balloon and then trying to hold it down underwater; you have to occupy precious time, energy, attention, and activity in maintaining that suppression indefinitely because the instant you fuck up or relent that force--like the balloon--instantly pops back up where everyone can see it.

That, folks, is what the #BROSR has done. Timekeeping, Patrons, and most recently Braunstein- and with that the confirmation that there are two distinct tiers of play, whose interactions form a stable gameplay loop that powers campaigns to their conclusions. Player-vs-Player Conflict drives the campaign at both tiers of play. The rediscovery of how Diffusion and Convergence also act as occilating forces that power the gameplay loop, and often in a fractal manner, was also restored from the Memory Hole by the Bros.

With this restoration of suppressed knowledge and wisdom, again encouraged by Mammon and not Molech (commercial incentives to exploit apparant naivety of hobbyists instead of instructing them on good hobby practices like a brother does), at last undone the missing component of a long-dysfunctional hobby is restore and now the machinry of the hobby is again compete and delivering on long-promised play experiences.

The catch? Doing so directly undermines all of the commercial operations of the Cargo Cult and their hangers-on. Why? Because how the games operate eliminate the need to constantly buy more product to solve deliberately-inflicted problems imposed by publishers to sell stuff they don't need.

The Cargo Cult, outside of the OSR, isn't feeling the effects just yet but they're effected all the same and that will just grow as hobbyists contrast what they hear from the Bros with what they're seeing from SOBS. Big Corpo says "Fuck you, paypigs. Give money or get stomped on by Normies who will, while the Bros keep showing folks how to play Real Games dirt cheap (buy ones, cry ones, on the cheap or free) without ever needing to buy any addons. Cargo Cultists can't maintain their own operations in such an environment, so they fold.

And those same people, when wondering where they can play, will be forced to confront that they either have to deal with Normies in SOBS' Clubhouse or they have to shape up and stop being Soup Aisle Sadsacks so they can get into a (or form a viable) Clubhouse run by and for hobbyists because the culture at-large won't be willing or able to make room for them anymore.

Either way, the future is now Clubhouse Or Quit.

Because the status quo is no longer viable, and the Cargo Cult cannot endure any longer either. Time is running out, Conventional Play people. Choose.